When a large electric current is supplied to an inductive load, pulse power supply devices, in which normally an energy source capacitor charged with high voltage is connected to the load by using switches such as an ignitron, a discharge gap switch and a thyristor so that a capacitor discharge is started, are generally used.
In these discharge switches, diodes called clamp circuits are generally connected to loads in parallel or to capacitors in parallel. After the electric current becomes maximum, a capacitor voltage is inverted and simultaneously the diodes are turned on, and the load current reflows to the diodes. As a result, reverse charging of the capacitor is prevented, and the clamped electric current continuously flows while being attenuated with time constant L/R due to electric resistance of the load.
On the other hand, in the applications of the pulse current, frequently rise time is more important than an attenuated waveform. Pulse high-magnetic field bending magnets of compact medical synchrotron accelerators and the like do not use the maximum magnetic field but require an operation such that the magnetic field is raised with time. For this reason, it is demanded that the electric current is attenuated quickly and a pulse rate is heightened. Further, gas excitation laser power supply requires high speed rise of a voltage and high repetition, and thus high repetition control is required as discharge power supply.
In order that the rise of the discharge current is stopped by controlling switches when the discharge current reaches a necessary current value, switches are switched from those only for ON control such as an ignitron, a discharge gap switch and a thyristor to semiconductor switches having self arc-suppressing ability using a gate signal such as a GTO thyristor and an IGBT (Insulated-gate Bipolar Transistor).
An inductive current on the load side, however, is clamped at a voltage of 0, and is only attenuated by the diodes at long time constant L/R in a freewheeling state. The energy is wasted and time to wait for the attenuation is required, thereby raising a technical problem of the pulse power supply devices requiring increased capacity and high repetition.
When the electric current in the freewheeling state is cut off and its magnetic energy can be regenerated to the capacitor, the wasted energy is reduced and further the energy returned to the capacitor is regenerated as next-time energy, so the pulse current generating power supply which has high energy efficiency and high repetition can be realized.